Hometown hero

Updated 9:35 am, Monday, September 16, 2013

Photo: Photo By Steve Bennett / San Antonio Express-News

Image 1of/9

Caption

Close

Image 1 of 9

Project designer Kaye Cruz, writer Barbara Renaud Gonzalez and producer/designer Joey Lopez were part of a team of artists who created a 26-page enhanced e-book on the life of voting rights activist Willie Velasquez. less

Project designer Kaye Cruz, writer Barbara Renaud Gonzalez and producer/designer Joey Lopez were part of a team of artists who created a 26-page enhanced e-book on the life of voting rights activist Willie ... more

Photo: Photo By Steve Bennett / San Antonio Express-News

Image 2 of 9

A group of local artists and designers has created an enhanced e-book using the iBook Author app on the life of voting rights pioneer Velasquez.

A group of local artists and designers has created an enhanced e-book using the iBook Author app on the life of voting rights pioneer Velasquez.

Photo: Courtesy Photo

Image 3 of 9

Voters rights activist Willie Velasquez (at podium), who died 20 years ago this week, inspired the creation of the National Alliance of Craftsmen Associations. He'll be honored Monday night at the group's first gala. less

Voters rights activist Willie Velasquez (at podium), who died 20 years ago this week, inspired the creation of the National Alliance of Craftsmen Associations. He'll be honored Monday night at the group's first ... more

Photo: Courtesy George Velasquez

Image 4 of 9

Image 5 of 9

Image 6 of 9

Image 7 of 9

Willie Velasquez, former head of the Southwest Voter Registration Project, at a San Antonio warehouse for voting machines.(Express-News file photo by Marianne Thomas)

Willie Velasquez, former head of the Southwest Voter Registration Project, at a San Antonio warehouse for voting machines.(Express-News file photo by Marianne Thomas)

Photo: MARIANNE THOMAS, LIGHT FILE PHOTO

Image 8 of 9

Catarina Velasquez, then 12, the daughter of the late Willie Velasquez, admires a portrait of her father that was painted by Christu Cantu and presented at the Hispanas Unidas Family Festival back in 1988.

Catarina Velasquez, then 12, the daughter of the late Willie Velasquez, admires a portrait of her father that was painted by Christu Cantu and presented at the Hispanas Unidas Family Festival back in 1988.

Photo: MARIANNE THOMAS, EXPRESS-NEWS FILE PHOTO

Image 9 of 9

Hometown hero

1 / 9

Back to Gallery

The right to vote was paramount to Willie Velasquez, the West Side boy who grew up to found the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project in 1974 and went on to be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995 by President Bill Clinton.

Without making too biblical an analogy, it all started with a flood.

Born in 1944, Velasquez grew up in the barrio on West Laurel Street. His house was beside a creek, and, as Barbara Renaud Gonzalez writes in “The Boy Made of Lightning,” a 26-page e-book enhanced with sound, music and links released Monday, appropriately, on Diez y Seis, “the rains turned his street into a puddle, and sometimes, an ocean.”

“Willie grew up on the West Side in the '50s during the time when that area of the city flooded badly as the weather turned bad, and the people were powerless to do anything,” said Renaud Gonzalez, a journalist and author of the novel “Golondrina, Why Did You Leave Me?” “As a young boy, he decided he wanted to do something about the flooding.”

As a young man, Velasquez began to understand the value of the vote and the political power it represented.

Most Popular

“What's unique about Willie Velasquez is that he was not partisan,” said Joseph Lopez, a professor of convergent media at the University of the Incarnate Word who was a designer and producer on the e-book project. “He wanted people to find out about the issues and go vote. I mean, Willie had a brother who was a Republican, and another that was Raza Unida.”

The e-book is narrated by U.S. Congressman Joaquin Castro, who noted by phone from his office in Washington, D.C., how important it is “for the next generation of Americans and Latinos to know about the contributions of people like Willie Velasquez in advancing our society.”

“He was so important in making sure that everyone could participate in our democratic process,” Castro said.

With 25 dynamic collaged illustrations by artist Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez, the book's special features include original music, including “Ya Basta” featuring Nicolas Valdez on accordion and Rudy Lopez on vocals and bajo sexto; “Apache Prism” by Pop Pistol; “Corrido de Willie Velasquez” produced by his brother George Velasquez; and a rap titled “Su Voto es Su Voto” by Iztli y Chimalli. Photos, videos and links to historical sites, a two-page glossary and resources for voting rights are a click away. Jimmy Klein does Willie's voice while Victoria Zapata Klein plays his mom.

The multi-touch book, created with the free iBooks Author app, is dedicated to Mary Louise Velasquez, Willie's mother, who died last year at 88.

Fortunately, Renaud Gonzalez was able to meet Señora Velasquez and talk with her about her son before she died — and before a brain tumor last year and subsequent surgery and treatment knocked the writer out of the project for several months. (She's healed remarkably well.)

“Willie's mom told me the story that the book is based on,” said Renaud Gonzalez.

The e-book is a cultural tour of the West Side, with uncles who like to fish and families gathering for Sunday barbecue, “which they ate with beans, rice, guacamole and drank lots of iced tea.” It's the story of a boy who loves the rain, except that “every time it rained, the beautiful river that crossed his city of San Antonio spilled over like a stopped-up sink.”

In the e-book, Willie, who likes to ride his bike and play baseball, one day hears a cry for help. He and his friend Rudy see a man getting carried away by the strong river current and throw him a rope. “Both of them fell down in the mud several times, but they saved him.”

It's an epiphany for the boy. Willie goes on to college and begins to understand the inequality of local politics — Anglo neighborhoods had good drainage. “And no one ever drowned.”

From walking the neighborhood knocking on doors to the national spotlight, Velasquez works diligently and tirelessly for the right to vote and show people the power of the ballot.

“It's a story of answering his calling,” Renaud Gonzalez said, “and Willie Velasquez answered his calling.”

Through it all, in Vasquez's paintings, Willie remains the young Willie, never aging, even as he accepts the highest civilian medal in the land from President Clinton.

According to the William C. Velasquez Institute, Southwest Voter Research has cultivated 50,000 community leaders, successfully litigated 85 voting rights lawsuits and has conducted 2,300 nonpartisan voter registration campaigns. Consequently, voter registration grew from 2.4 million registered Latinos in 1974 to nearly 11 million nationwide in 2010.

“I knew nothing about Willie Velasquez, and I pretty much grew up here,” said Kaye Cruz, project designer of “The Boy Made of Lightning.” “You have a gentleman like this in our own backyard who has such significant reach. And yet for all his greatness, we put him in a box and shove him away. We should be marching for a Willie Velasquez Street or a Willie Velasquez statue! Hopefully, this book will reach a new generation who need to know about this man.”